In Western Massachusetts, a browse around farmers’ markets or stores like Atkins Farms leads customers to heirloom varieties of vegetables and fruits, especially tomatoes and apples, one of the best known of the latter being the Northern Spy.
The heirloom tomatoes for sale by organic farms like Atlas Farms in South Deerfield are not only fascinating because of their varying colors and shapes—some have striped skins, some are fluted like miniature hoopskirts—but because they show how much more varied fruits and vegetables can be than the modern supermarket culture leads us to believe.
In New England, heirloom fruits and vegetables typically date from the nineteenth century—some from very early in that century, like that Northern Spy apple, which traces its designation back to 1800.
Then there are other kinds of foods that trail intriguing historic credentials. Everybody loves a sweet from La Fiorentina, the pastry shop that started in Springfield’s South End and now feeds the sweet tooth of people in Northampton and East Longmeadow as well. It’s no surprise that Fiorentina plies us with everything from the cookies of our dreams to cannoli and tiramisu, but it also makes a pastry called sfogliatelle, which, if it were a piece of furniture, could kill the competition on Antiques Roadshow.
This jewel from Italy’s culinary past consists of a lobster-tail pastry shell filled with baked ricotta and semolina and bits of candied citron. It was invented, so the story goes, by monks from Salerno in the 17th century (another version credits nuns in the vicinity of Naples).
In the U.S., food is generally considered as something in the public domain except for recipes treated as trade secrets by the restaurants where they’re developed. You can go on the Web and find recipes for sfogliatelle—and, of course, for practically everything.
But in Europe, drinks and edibles—from wine and pastries to meats and cheeses—are increasingly seen as cultural treasures to be protected by intellectual property laws. European food producers caught on long ago that authenticity is not only worth money, but, among those with a strong sense of history and a discriminating desire for purity, more than money. In February of this year, the European Union announced that it had registered its 1,000th name-protected food product.
On both sides of the Atlantic, there is much philosophical discussion about the merits and demerits of bogarting prestigious, historic food names and applying copyrights to dishes prepared with highly specialized techniques. Arguments by practitioners of advanced molecular gastronomy to the contrary notwithstanding, I come down in the same place as Wired writer Mark McClusky, who recently offered this simple but compelling response to a story on this issue: “It’s hard to draw a clear line when it comes to the creative ownership of food.”
And trademark stipulations sometimes founder on the rocks of paradox. In England, for example, two fellows named Joe Schneider and Randolph Hodgson wanted to make Stilton cheese using a traditional recipe, but ran afoul of a rule requiring name-protected Stilton to be made with pasteurized milk.
The truth, of course, is that Stilton was made with raw milk for hundreds of years before pasteurized milk entered the process, but Schneider and Hodgson were forced to call their cheese “Stichelton” (the Middle English name for the cheese’s namesake city, Stilton).
Nevertheless, in parts of Europe with very old agricultural traditions, there are special products with ecological features related to certain regions that make the names worth protecting from imitation. A famous example is Roquefort cheese, which must come from the milk of a particular breed of sheep and be aged in caves near Roquefort-sur-Soulzon, in France’s Aveyron region. There the cheese is impregnated with Penicillium roqueforti, a fungus indigenous to the caves.
Poland has entered the field of gastronomic name protection under EU auspices with many products, including Bryndza Podhalanska cheese. This spicy, salty, somewhat pasty cheese is made from the milk of mountain sheep that graze on Tatra Mountain vegetation.
Then there is Chleb Pradnicki (Pradnicki bread), a potato bread dating from 1421, when the bishop of Krakow gave his cook two farms whose workers had the task of baking the bishop’s bread.
Chleb Pradnicki survived change after change in the incredibly intricate laws governing the rights to bake and sell bread in and around Krakow from the 15th through the 19th centuries, and is still available through one bakery in the city.
And in this country with its passion for history and for agriculture—a country where beekeeping has flourished from time immemorial—there are still honeys and meads with centuries-old origins.
Podkarpacki Miod Spadziowy is a honey produced by forest beekeepers from 17 districts in the Podkarpacie region, areas with coniferous woods containing heavy concentrations of European silver fir. Statutes governing beekeeping in this area date from 1478; they’re the oldest beekeeping regulations in Poland.
Should there be intellectual property protections for food? Much as one respects the long history of sfogliatelle and the legends surrounding it, I think we’re past the stage where anyone has a moral claim to copyright on a pastry with ingredients that long ago came unmoored from their roots in a certain ecology.
By that same token, you wouldn’t like to see labels reading “Podkarpacki Miod Spadziowy” slapped on honey that didn’t come from the silver fir forests of Podkarpacki, where forest beekeepers were paying taxes and observing standards before America was discovered.
When it’s a matter of contemporary food evolving in real time, you don’t want to be quick to restrict originality or even creative imitation. But when it comes to food with time-honored geographic distinctions, buyers have a right to know what they’re getting.”
